A browser extension can only attach to a tab that loaded after it was installed or updated, Docognito included. Reload the extension card in chrome://extensions, hard refresh the affected tab, and reopen the tab entirely if it still looks like the real site.
The one cause behind most reports
Almost every "it stopped working" report traces back to the same mechanism. A content script, the small piece of code that redraws the page, attaches to a tab at the moment that tab loads. It does not reach into a tab that was already open before the extension was installed, updated, or reloaded, because Chrome never gives it that chance retroactively.
That means a tab left open from before you added Docognito, or from before a version update, keeps showing the real claude.ai or chatgpt.com interface indefinitely, not because anything is broken, but because the tab never had the opportunity to load with the extension present.
Extensions themselves also update automatically in the background from time to time, without you clicking anything. From the point of view of a tab that has been open since before that update, the result looks identical to the extension simply having failed, even though nothing about it actually did.
The three reload steps
Reload the extension card
Open chrome://extensions, find Docognito's card, and click the small circular reload icon on it. Confirm the version number shown matches what you expect if you recently updated.
Hard refresh the tab
Go to the claude.ai or chatgpt.com tab and press Cmd+Shift+R on a Mac or Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows. A normal refresh sometimes serves a cached version of the page that skips the content script.
Close the tab and open a new one
If the hard refresh does not bring the disguise back, close that tab completely and open the site again in a fresh tab. This guarantees a clean load with no cached state left over.
Working through these three in order resolves the overwhelming majority of cases, because each one addresses a slightly different way a tab can end up stale relative to the extension.
Why this happens more than people expect
| Situation | Why the tab is stale |
|---|---|
| Tab open before you installed the extension | It never loaded with the extension present at all |
| Tab open before a Chrome browser update | The update can reload extensions in the background, disconnecting tabs that were already open |
| Tab open before Docognito auto-updated | Extension updates behave the same way as a manual reload from the tab's perspective |
| Long running tab left open for days | Nothing wrong with the tab itself, it is simply older than the current extension state |
The pattern across every row is the same. It is never that the disguise failed inside a tab it was already running in. It is that a specific tab predates whichever change just happened.
A hard refresh clears a cache, it does not clear your conversation
Reloading, even a hard refresh, only reloads the page. It does not sign you out, close your conversation, or lose anything you had typed and already sent. A draft still being typed in the composer at the moment of reload is the one thing worth sending or copying first, since a full page reload does discard unsent text the same way it would on the real site.
When Shift plus Escape specifically does not respond
The keyboard shortcut runs into the same stale tab cause as everything above, but it is worth explaining why the timing matters more for a shortcut than for the rest of the extension. Docognito registers Shift plus Escape at the point Chrome calls window capture, which runs ahead of anything the page itself listens for. That is a deliberate choice: chatgpt.com binds its own action to the same two keys, jumping focus back to its message box, and registering earlier in the capture order is what lets Docognito's toggle win that race instead of the page's own shortcut firing. A tab that predates the extension never got that listener registered at all, which is the same reload fix covered above. If the popup already shows the correct state for a tab but the keyboard shortcut specifically does nothing, reach for the popup switch directly. It does the same job through a click instead of a keypress, with no timing dependency to work around.
When the page loads but looks wrong instead of not at all
A page that loads with misaligned toolbar icons, overlapping text or spacing that does not match how it normally renders is a different symptom from the disguise not appearing at all, and it is worth telling the two apart before troubleshooting further. A wrong looking layout has one extra cause beyond the three reload steps above: browser zoom. An unusually high or low zoom level stretches spacing and alignment past what the layout was built to handle, so reset zoom to the default with Cmd or Ctrl plus zero and check whether the layout corrects itself. If a hard refresh and a zoom reset both fail to fix a genuinely misaligned layout, that points toward the underlying site's own interface having changed faster than the disguise built to sit over it, rarer than a stale tab or a zoom setting but worth ruling in last.
Confirming it is actually running
After reloading, open the popup by clicking the extension icon. The toggle should show the disguise as switched on for that site. If the toggle itself looks correct but the page still shows the real interface, that points away from a stale tab and toward the page rendering incorrectly instead, the looks wrong rather than does not appear case covered above.
You can also confirm from chrome://extensions directly. Docognito should be listed, switched on, with no error badge showing on its card. An error badge there points to something failing inside the extension itself rather than a simple stale tab, and reloading the card as in the first step above often clears it.
When it is a network issue, not the extension
Docognito changes what is drawn on the page. It has no effect on whether a workplace network, proxy or firewall allows the connection to claude.ai or chatgpt.com in the first place. If the underlying site itself will not load, with or without the disguise, that is a network permission issue rather than anything the reload steps above can fix, and it is worth ruling out separately, covered in getting past a workplace network block.
The three reload steps, in order
Start with the extension card reload, then a hard refresh, then a fresh tab if neither works. That order resolves a stale tab in under a minute in almost every case, and it is worth running through before assuming anything deeper is wrong.
Use Docognito and remember that any tab open before an install or an update needs one of the three reload steps above before the disguise reaches it.